Drivers Set to Take the Field In St. Louis for 2015 NTDC
Don Biggerstaff likes to spend his free time fishing, so until this year, he had been unwilling to take a shot at competing in the National Truck Driving Championships.
“I had friends who had been doing it for years,” said Biggerstaff, who has been driving a truck since 1994. “But I was one of those guys who said, ‘I don’t have time for that.’ ”
But his competitive juices got the better of him, so this year, he traded some of his time on the lake for time behind the wheel practicing his driving skills in parking lots.
“I’m pretty much competitive in anything I do, whether it’s fishing or softball,” Biggerstaff said. “I like to win.”
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He did. Biggerstaff, an ABF Freight System driver and former Road Team Captain, is the North Carolina 4-axle champion and is headed to St. Louis as one of the 431 drivers competing in the 2015 NTDC and National Step Van Driving Championships.
This year’s contest, scheduled for Aug. 11-15, marks the 78th annual NTDC and the seventh annual step van competition.
Unlike Biggerstaff, not everyone made it to the national competition on their first try. It took James Churchman, a.k.a. the “California Kid,” the better part of two decades to make the cut.
Churchman, 55, who has driven for Golden State Foods the past 20 years, said there were more than 600 drivers in the California state competition. He won the flatbed class.
“It’s been a long road,” Churchman said. “I’ve been competing for 18 years.”
Churchman comes from a long line of truckers. His great-grandfather was a truck driver, and so was his grandfather. The call of the road was so strong for his grandfather that the man literally passed away in a tractor cab while sitting by the side of the road. Before this year, Churchman’s personal best was a third place in the California state competition in 2011.
He attributes his success this year to sheer determination, daily practice in parking lots and learning from his fellow competitors, whom he has always regarded as “better than I am.”
But tough competition is nothing new for him. Churchman played baseball through college and was once regarded as a top prospect for the California Angels. He described his style of play as a cross between Pete Rose, known as “Charlie Hustle,” and Rickey Henderson, nicknamed “The Man of Steal.”
For the championships this year, however, that’s where the comparisons to baseball end. That’s because the competition take place, quite literally, on the gridiron.
The driving portion of the championships, normally held in gigantic, boxy, nondescript exhibition halls, will take place this year inside the Edward Jones Dome, the 66,000-seat stadium and home of the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams.
But in this case, the pros taking the field won’t be beefy tackles and lightning-fast wide receivers; they’ll be the best — and safest — truck drivers in America.
To be eligible for the big show, drivers need not only to be state champs in their class or overall grand champions but accident-free a year before the competition and to have driven for their carriers for at least a year. Several of the drivers have logged millions of accident-free miles.
The championships, often called the “Super Bowl of Safety,” are hosted each year by American Trucking Associations. The competition has a long history, dating back to 1937, when it was known as the National Truck Rodeo.
“It’s going to be a cool thing for the drivers to say, “Hey, I competed in the Dome,’ ” said David Doyle, contest chairman of the Dallas-Fort Worth regional truck driving championships in Texas.
In the Dallas-Fort Worth regional contest alone were 105 competitors. Only the top two scorers in each of the four regions went on to the statewide contest, Doyle said.
In all, 5,156 drivers competed in state competitions across the United States this year, in contests mostly held in May and June.
For the national competition, the class and grand champion winners will be those drivers who do the best job performing pre-trip inspections, negotiating a tough driving course on the stadium floor, score well on a written test of trucking industry and driving knowledge, and put on a good professional face in interviews with judges.
But Doyle said it takes more than that to be a winner.
“I think 99% of it is attitude,” said Doyle, who heads the DFW Council of Safety Professionals, “and you have to take a little pride in what you do.”
He added, “Of course, you’ve got company corporate attitude to help support you. If your company doesn’t want you to do it, you won’t be successful.”
Indeed, corporate attitude easily can be seen in the large numbers of contestants who make it to the top and are treated like rock stars by their employers.
A total of 85 companies will be represented in the national championships this year.
Seven of the competing companies will be represented with 10 or more drivers at the nationals. Three FedEx companies are sending the most drivers by far — 148, all of them state champs or class winners.
Others include Con-way Freight, 55; Wal-Mart Transportation, 53; ABF Freight System, 19; UPS Freight, 17; YRC Freight, 11; and, Old Dominion Freight Line, 10.
Of the 431 competitors, 33 drivers will represent 31 carriers that are not ATA members. This is the second year the competition is allowing drivers who work for companies that are not ATA members.
There are 39 rookies competing.
The 386 NTDC competitors have logged more than 627 million miles in their lifetimes, while the 45 step van competitors have traveled more than 26 million miles.
Some things will change this year at the competition.
Spectators watching the driving contest won’t get to move to the edge of the floor. They’ll have to stay in their stadium seats, where they’ll get a better overall view but won’t be allowed to get close to the competitors, said Jacob Pierce, ATA’s manager of safety programs.
Also this year, the course judges won’t be holding up any signs telling the audience how many points a driver got after completing each course. Families, friends and spectators will have to wait until a driver completes a run, and then wait a few minutes until a score is posted on the announcer’s jumbo board.
Because equipment for the competition can be difficult to secure, there will be a mix of automatic and standard transmissions on the course trucks, but transmission types will not be mixed within each class. In past competitions, some of the drivers have complained that automatic transmissions are difficult to roll to a controlled stop.
“It’s kind of difficult for us to find equipment, because drivers can’t drive their company equipment,” Pierce said.
But to most of these drivers, the equipment won’t be a deciding factor. They’re good at what they do, and the bottom line is, they have the skill set to drive any truck.
William Goins, 46, an Old Dominion Freight Line driver and Indiana grand champion, said he competes for two reasons: to validate that he is a professional and to become an even better driver.
“I believe the contest is won and lost in the written test,” Goins said. “The guys come to compete — and they can drive. I think where you really separate yourself from the rest of the competitors is with the testing, with the knowledge.”
George Beland, a South Carolina driver for AAA Cooper Transportation for the past 24 years, said his terminal manager talked him into entering the state competition.
“I was a little skeptical at first,” Beland said. “I was surprised at how well I did. I went in with little expectations, and I won my twins division and also won grand champion.”
It will be a good opportunity for us to show that we’re out there not only earning a living but to do it in a safe way,” Beland added. “I got my work cut out for me. It’s going to be a humbling experience.”
